VIII.

Another day. More exhaustion.

I waited several minutes after the girl had left before I felt comfortable leaving my seat. I didn't want to be mistaken for a stalker in the event we walked back in similar directions, but the consequence of courtesy meant that I missed the last cross campus bus.

On certain other nights, I would have relished the opportunity for a late night walk. But tonight, the clouds from earlier that day had persisted into the evening and now blocked my view of the stars.

There was no hanging crescent moon in sight either. Darkness, however strong and mysterious, could not thwart its natural enemies alone. Moonlight on the other hand, while not particularly potent, harnessed just enough ultraviolet waves reflected from its sister sun to hold the forces of black mold at bay.

I treaded, carefully at first, but I remembered suddenly that Destiny had promised a surprise Monday stream at the end of her last broadcast.

“I'll be on very late,” she had said somewhere.

Now this was very rare, practically unheard of. Destiny hardly ever entertained early weekday events on the account of school and after class responsibilities. Something terrible must have happened, which meant this was the kind of occasion I couldn't miss.

So between the vapid night sky and the urge to rush home, my feet clamored against the cement pavement. I felt the painful waves of zero shock absorption and the uncertainties of every next step. Was I landing in the sweet embrace of darkness or running further into the cavity of a mycological monster masking itself as the nightly maiden?

I reached the top of the hill at the campus gate. The neighborhood below sank into the treeline. White fences and walls receded into the periphery. I followed what light remained, streetlamps spiraling like the shells of cephalopods, unfurled logarithmically along the descent, each lamp smaller and dimmer than the last until all notion of brightness dissolved into faint amber wisps behind me.

Did there exist water so still it didn’t break when you stepped in it? That’s what it felt like, moving through streets fully submerged in their own ideal self-image, where the surrounding houses were simultaneously the pristine picketed suburban sprawls of a glorious once upon a promised time and the cadavers of our practical reality, where the young become old, the living begin dying, and the weak and enfeebled are beset by some unspeakable malice and cruelty.

This, too, was deskny.

To ease myself, I recited the Fibonacci Sequence in my head.

At last, after enough wading through the dark, I reached the doorsteps of my apartment. I undressed even before I reached the front door. There was nothing to fear. No one else lived here. No one was here to care.

I tossed my clothes into the hamper I had placed by the entrance for precisely this reason. The next few motions involved turning on my desktop with the finger with the least amount of surface area while rushing into the bathroom and throwing myself into the shower.

Water in motion felt great. I opened my mouth and rinsed, probing my fingers inside to stretch open my upper lips to reveal my gums. That wasn't enough, I decided. The water from the diner had not been enough.

So I drank shower water.

Was I not scared of rust and metal contaminants? What about regular mold, ordinary mold formed and stuck to the showerhead that I so assiduously cleaned on the daily? Perhaps I was, but for every microscopic razor I ingested, every nanodroplet of chlorine I consumed, I was more terrified of the possibility that any black mold still resided somewhere in my throat.

I rinsed and spat and then rinsed and drank. I lathered my body with soap each time the rinsing water crashed against the bottom of the tub, then gurgled the next batch of water and swallowed, shaking my head back and forth to guide fluid molecules down my esophagus, where I hoped they would push any surviving spores into the pit of my stomach.

There, the rolling acids would consume whatever was left, purge the black mold until it was reduced to its subatomic roots and all traces of that afternoon were erased from every corner of my body save for my mind.

When the deed was done, I dried myself off. With several minutes to spare, I tossed the used cotton towel into a separate bin and put on a clean pink shirt with fluffy hems. I poured myself several cups of water, because the last time I had found my throat remarkably parched for some reason. I checked on the monster figurines I had placed by the windows and was satisfied with their deterrence when I found the sill free of pollutants.

I then rubbed cotton balls inside my ears to remove any last trace of moisture, moved my microphone closer to the edge of the desk, slipped my giant headphones over my ears, slid open the digital camera, and refreshed Destiny’s page.

The screen flashed. Destiny’s pink hair was as vibrant as my shirt. Her digital outfits normally consisted of mysterious, quasi gothic inspired wardrobes from several centuries ago, to match her illusive and celestial nature. Her usual outfit, for instance, consisted of a lilac bodysuit topped with a vintage silk veil lined with black and gold lacings.

But tonight, Destiny was wearing all white attire. And it wasn’t anything so formal like a chiton dress or an elaborate ball gown. No, she was wearing a cream white blouse over a cardigan with simple criss crossing patterns. When her model floated upwards, I even spotted white dress pants.

Something was very wrong.

Her audience noticed the change too. Some seemed surprised. Others welcomed it. But nonetheless, a quorum of howls erupted from digital faceless, demanding what had pushed Destiny to completely reimagine herself.

She pretended not to notice.

“Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, this is Destiny. How are you today?”

Not good, not good, Destiny.

“Sorry for the last minute surprise, I know I announced things on such short notice, but I just… I just felt like I needed to see everyone today. Have you ever had that feeling guys?”

Not really. Maybe sometimes. Rarely.

“I know there are questions you all want to ask me. So many things have happened, even today, that I just feel like I need to talk to all of you about it. I think it’s just because we’re in July, and I can’t help but remember July, 1999, the month and year I was born.”

When was I born, actually?

“Before I get to why I called all of us here today, I want to summarize the readings from last time. This is still a very volatile period.”

Destiny cleared her throat with water and spoke. The upbeat, whimsical tenor of her voice mellowed into trancelike dictation.

“The ionic hexaglyphs predict continuous vertigo. Electromagnetism is on the rise. You can detect Schumann resonances even from unplugged devices now, so beware. The shadow hiding from the sun grows. Now, more than ever, there are signs of the world's inversion of rationality. Its consciousness falls into slumber, giving rise to rampant stochasticism, nonarborescent chaos, the transient ambiguity of all meaning.”

All clear. All clear. Keep going.

“Of course, we can interpret no direct action to take from our readings. Only the Electromagnetic Man once could see the patterns. We can only follow in their footsteps.”

Wait. What did she say?

“But what we can do is remember why we're here. We are, after all, all aliens landed here, temporarily fixed to a point on an astrology map that stretches light years across our universe. We are, after all, meant to return once more to the sky, to space, to deskny to save all from a new apocalypse rising.”

That wasn't…

More water. More talking.

“Now all of this is simply a summation from last time, remember. Anything you might have seen or heard or read in the last few days has no bearing on the past. We cannot affect it,” she said. “I just have one quick follow-up before I leave you for tonight. You all remember the investigation I was working with, right?”

Of course, how could I forget?

“I think the investigation is turning on me,” Destiny declared. “I saw them recently. Very recently. I think they’ve been following me. Maybe they think I know something I shouldn’t. Maybe they think I’ve done something wrong. You must all be wondering why I've dressed myself in white tonight. White, the color of purity. Of unquestionable innocence. You might see me on the news soon. Know that what you will see are lies, fabrications of unreliable radio waves. The truth, as I’ve always told you, is in the sky, my loves, and we who are chosen are all meant to return to it.”

Good. Good. Just like that.

Destiny closed her short stream with a final reading and took a few questions from her audience. I didn’t pay attention. These were rote rituals to satiate the lobotomized. If given the chance, I could even perform with my eyes closed. Destiny had already said everything she needed to say at the beginning of her broadcast.

My mind wandered. Tonight, the sounds in my headphones drifted away into pleasant silence. My narrowing eyes surveyed the room. Tonight, it was clean; the black mold dared not show itself.

Before sleep took me, I remembered one final thing.

I remembered drinking all the water on the desk.